Cheap Women (Book) (ANNIE LEIBOVITZ, SUSAN SONTAG) Price

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Customer Reviews of Women

The beauty, dignity & grace of modern women captured
WOMEN makes a powerful statement on many levels. On the most obvious level these are great photographs taken by a master that are beautifully displayed in full-page and two-page formats. 63 black and white and 59 color photographs from Annie Leibovitz, who is one of our most famous and popular portrait photographers, are a visual treat.

Each picture is accompanied by a simple caption: the subject's name, profession, and where the picture was taken. All seem to have been taken in 1999, the year the book was published. The captions define the subjects while the pictures open a window into their world.

Leibovitz makes a statement on the status and condition of women in our society in this collection of photographs. This Leibovitz does well. She is a photographer of the rich and famous and these women are well represented in this collection. There are 12 actresses, 7 artists, 6 musicians, 6 writers, 4 performance artists, 3 First Ladies, 3 CEOs, 2 poets, 2 dancers, 2 Supreme Court justices, 2 comedians, 2 models, a general, a Secretary of State, a Cherokee chief, an opera singer, and an astronaut represented in the book. But everyday working women are also well represented. A waitress, a maid, a dragster driver, a police woman, a sewing machine operator, 2 teachers, soldiers, coal miners, farmers, restaurant customers, debutantes, cheerleaders, doctors, scientists, and activists also share these pages. Athletes are also well represented. Young women (students, a choir, and all-girl gang members) share the pages with older women. Sisters are photographed together and mothers with their children. What is revealed is the diversity and richness of women.

A set of photographs at the end of the book shows two views of each of four Las Vegas showgirls. Each is pictured in color in their stage costumes opposite a black and white photo of them out of costume. The theme of these seems to be the comparison of the natural vs. the adorned or crafted image of woman. All the other women in the book are represented by one image.

At the end of the book there are six pages where a brief biography of each subject is given. These are valuable background for each picture giving us a better look into the lives of the subjects.

The essay by Susan Sontag discusses the meaning of photographing women and the messages received by viewing pictures of women. She devotes a lot of her discussion to the role of female beauty in society. Its a wonderful essay to read and to accompany these photographs. These images of the beauty, dignity, and grace of modern women captured by one of our master photographers are inspiring and thought provoking. Indulge yourself and spend some time with this great book.

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I'm not Thomas, I'm his daughter, he used my computer to ord
er from Amazon and Now His Name is Stuck on My Account

So much for a title.

Annie Leibovitz's book requires no words. Sorry, Susan, I didn't read your text. The best way to enjoy Annie's photos is to set aside your search for a defining message about women. There isn't one. Women are varied creatures just like the rest of humanity and nature.

Don't you just love looking at them? Don't wish you could get a closer look? Don't you wish the interesting one's would stand in just the right light so you could get a better look? Didn't you always think Hillary C. was beautiful, but you didn't know why?

Thank you Annie Leibovitz for taking the interesting women and standing them in a beautiful light and binding them in a huge book so we can stand and stare as long as we want.

Enough said.

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Image as Everywoman
Fiction is my preference when writing book reviews, because I love the complexity of words, stories, and the vagaries of human nature with its endless permutations. But when I received Leibovitz's astonishing compilation of photographs as a gift, I thought I might attempt an impression of page after page of females, as seen through the professional eye of one of the most important photographers of our generation.

Who has not gazed in awe at Leibovitz's unusual perspective, the beautiful made even more so? But I want real women with wrinkles and dirt under their fingernails, the kind of women overlooked in the rush to worship human perfection. I want to see if there is a balance, not just the too thin, too gorgeous, too self-indulgent. In that regard, I believe Women contains a preponderance of well-groomed elegance, albeit impressive, for instance a breathtaking portrait of Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother, Blythe Danner. This particular image contrasts a young woman in the blush of her feminine power with the graceful progression of years that adds to a woman's complex attraction. To be sure, there are folios of celebrities, socialites, all those who live in the rarified strata of entitlement.

While not as numerous, the presentation of real women like me, those who inhabit my world, are so powerful as to diminish the bland compositions of society's darlings. The studies of abused women jump off the pages, eyes glazed, the immediacy of domestic violence tattooing their faces, staring into a future devoid of hope; a remarkably insightful photograph of Ellen DeGeneris, virtually unrecognizable under a layer of cracked white greasepaint; two pre-adolescent girls in the back of a pickup truck, displaying a row of leggy blonde Barbie's, with Ken in a faux high school letter jacket, his plastic Prom Queen sporting a crown atop hair that cascades down the length of her body; three young Latino women glare accusingly at the lens, displaying gang colors with pride, ambiguously dangerous; the lines of age score lived-in faces, eyes shadowed by years of struggle, etched finally by the exhaustion of daily survival. For me, these pictures contain the essence of womanhood, untainted by ubiquitous vanities.

In all, Leibovitz "sees" these women, their strengths, frailties and vulnerabilities. This series of images is a walk through the multi-hued, textured world of women, esoteric, generous, often brutally honest and unflinching. Luan Gaines/2004.